Isabella Whitney


Isabella Whitney Isabella Whitney was arguably the first female poet and professional woman writer in England. More specifically, Whitney is credited with being the first Englishwoman to have penned and published original secular poetry under her own name.

Early life

Isabella Whitney was born in Cheshire, England. Her father, Geffrey, was brother to Sir Robert Whitney, their family being the Cheshire branch of the influential Whitney family based in Clifford, Gorsington, Icomb and Castleton. At the time of her birth, her family were living at Coole Pilate though the family moved in 1558 when her father took a lease of a farm at Ryles Green, Audlem. Isabella Whitney was the second child, having an older brother, Geffrey, four sisters - Anne, Margery, Mary and Dorothea - and a younger brother, Brooke. Her brother, Geffrey Whitney, was a notable author of the time whose works include A Choice of Emblemes and other Devises. Geoffrey died in 1601 without a spouse.

Personal life

Whitney lived and worked in London until 1573 when, unable to support herself, she returned to the family home in Ryles Green. The Wilkersley court records for 1576 show her father being fined for the fact that his unmarried daughters, Dorothea and Isabella, were both pregnant. Isabella’s child, a girl, was baptised in September of that year in Audlem but there is no further reference to her.
Sometime around 1580 she married the Physician of Audlem, Richard Eldershaw, a Catholic who was several times fined for non-attendance at church. In 1600 he was fined the sum of £240 at a time when a rural labourer would expect to earn £40-£60 a year. Perhaps this is why Whitney saw the benefit of using her contacts in the publishing world to make a little extra money around this time. They had two children: Marie and Edmund.
Sister Eldershae is mentioned in her brother’s will of 1601 as are her children and her husband, Richard. Dorothea is not mentioned in this Will so it must be assumed that she predeceased her brother. Geffrey leaves his sister, Isabella, a quantity of silver – a bequest perhaps recognising her lamentable financial situation and the affection between the two siblings.
Isabella surfaces again in 1624 when her other brother, Brooke, a successful lawyer in London, makes his Will and dies. There is no mention of Richard Eldershaw; he has presumably died since 1601. By this time Isabella would have been in her eighties. No record of her death has so far surfaced though her children are shown living in Stafford as adults.

Career

Through her uncle’s contacts, Whitney built up contacts in the printing industry and began penning verse which was published, initially anonymously but later under her own name or initials, using the tropes in fashion at the time but subverting them from the traditional, socially-approved roles women and men were expected to play in relationships and society generally. Losing her job, she turned to her writing to support her, an endeavour in which she was supported by Richard Jones, an up and coming member of the Stationers’ Company.
In 1567 Jones published a small collection of Whitney’s verse: The Copy of a letter, lately written in meeter, by a yonge Gentilwoman: to her vnconstant Louer. With an Admonition to al yonge Gentilwomen, and to all other Mayds in general to beware of mennes flattery. This collection of four poems in the popular epistolary form deals with relationship issues and presents four very different and somewhat unconventional views of how men and women ought to behave as lovers which serve to emphasise what she apparently saw as the hypocrisy and unfairness prevalent in society.
This criticism of accepted norms is used again in “A Sweet Nosgay” published in 1573 but this time she is attacking the status of women generally, not just as lovers. As she freely admits, she was inspired by Hugh Plat's Floures of Philosophie, reworking some of his aphorisms on the themes of love, suffering, friendship, and depression with an added feminine perspective that many would call “proto-feminist”. She followed this section with ‘letters’ addressed to various family members and friends which enabled her to discuss aspects of her theme. The collection closes with arguably her best known work – Wyll – which demonstrates not only her intimate knowledge of London at this period but also uses a popular trope of the mock Will to make social comment.
1578 saw the publication of The Lamentacion of a Gentilwoman which is considered to be Whitney’s work. It was written in response to the death of William Gruffith, Gentleman. Who this gentleman was is a mystery. Various suggestions have been put forward but no evidence has surfaced to support any of them.
Again in 1600 a work is published which has been ascribed to Whitney: Ovidius Naso His Remedie of Love. This collection comprises a translation of Remedia Armoris followed by ‘a letter to the Reader and two “epistles, of which one is translated out of Ouid, the other is an answere thereunto”’. That last of these is reckoned to be Whitney’s work and is written in the voice of Aeneas and addressed to Dido, the abandoned queen of Carthage – characters who frequently appear in Whitney’s work.

Works

Whitney was a very unusual and progressive woman, especially for the sixteenth century. She was unconventional in many ways. While almost all women writers of the time were well connected and noble, Whitney was not, and because of this, she often criticized the financial situations of her time in her writing, as well as criticizing gender roles. She also hoped that her writings would bring her and her family some sort of income. Some critics claim that Whitney's poetry proclaimed her as an outsider, or “other,” who pursued her own interests publicly. Whitney was often upfront in the way that she wrote. A common theme in her works were of women in powerless positions and romance. During the time period she was living in, it was important for women to remain modest and under control, however, Whitney did the opposite of this. As Whitney had apologized for borrowing some of her ideas, she is one of a few who named their contemporary sources. Even more importantly, she gave a “public voice to breezily expressed secular concerns”. Furthermore, Whitney was the first writer, male or female, “to exhibit any concern for gender-based phrasing, a practice that took another four hundred years to catch on”. Similarly, scholars have argued that with her use of “complaint, manifesto, satire, mock will,” Whitney was attempting to show a temporal utopia, long before utopia was a generic custom.
According to most critics, Isabella Whitney's works contained a certain degree of autobiographical material. This can be seen in two of her connected poems: A Communication Which the Author had to London before she Made Her Will and The Manner of Her Will, and What She Left to London and to All Those in it, of her Departing where the writer is not only lacking in finances, but also spends the majority her time amongst "the poor, the imprisoned, and the insane", otherwise known as the commonwealth of London. Her most innovative poems were her verse epistles, many of which were addressed to female relatives. She addressed her poem "Will and Testament" to the city of London, mocking it as a heartless friend, greedy and lacking charity. These works were written in ballad metre and contained both witty and animated descriptions of everyday life. Judging from these popular inclusions, it is likely that the reason for the publishing of her works was simply to supplement her scanty income. As she states in an epistle to "her Sister Misteris A.B." in A Sweet Nosegay, "til some houshold cares mee tye, / My bookes and Pen I will apply," possibly suggesting that she sought a professional writing career to support her in an unmarried state. Whitney's publisher, Richard Jones, was a prominent figure in the contemporary market for ballads, and his purchase of her manuscripts makes sense in this regard, even if little evidence of their relationship survives beyond the front matter to The Copy of a Letter.
Isabella Whitney pioneered her field of women poets. While a lot of her practices were common for contemporary male authors of the mid-sixteenth century, as a woman she was quite the trendsetter. She published her poetry in a time when it was not customary for a woman, especially one not of the aristocracy, to do so. In addition, her material contained controversial issues such as class-consciousness and political commentary as well as witty satire, and was made available to the upper and the middle class. Whitney's two best known works are The Copy of a Letter written in 1567?, and A Sweet Nosgay written in 1573.

Writings